In January, the Mountain Lion Television broadcasting program received a new set of Mac Pro computers to accommodate the current needs of the students. After months of dealing with laggy computers, broadcasting adviser Douglas Sipes decided a change needed to happen.

“These computers were installed at the end of January this year, but I know they were received probably in late November or early December. As a matter of fact, we ordered them the day they went public with the new computer, and there was a lot of work done to them before they were installed. We’re still working out the bugs with them. That’s why we put them in this year instead of leaving them for the new person who ends up taking over for me. I wanted to get the bugs worked out of these for them, so they didn’t have to do that as part of plus everything else,” Sipes said.

The previous set of computers had become obsolete and lagged behind the busy environment of the broadcasting room. This caused a backup of work and disrupted the workflow of broadcasting students. 

“We ended up getting new computers because the old ones were actually kind of slow and our workflow wasn’t fast enough; it actually decreased even though we got more computers, which is kind of unbelievable. But they crashed a lot more. We just didn’t have the quickness we needed to get things done,” Sipes said.

Much like the previous set of computers, the new set was part of the widely known Mac Pro line of digital devices. 

“We got the new Mac Pro, M3s, which have the newest chips, they’re a much faster version. So far, they actually seem to be pulling up everything a lot quicker than the other ones,” Sipes said.

The new computers, although the same brand, provided much better video editing capabilities as greatly improved speed from the previous models.  This improves the efficiency for broadcasting students. 

“I enjoy the faster computers a whole lot more than I did the old ones. I can get a lot more edits done now that I’m not waiting the whole period for our editing software to open, ” junior Dominick Zlupko said. 

Zlupko believes that the new computers are superior to not only the old ones but are also ahead of other options as well. This is partially due to the convenience and ease of access of the Mac’s.

“I think our computers are state of the art enough that I would not prefer any other, there are several PCs on the market, but the Mac does not take up as much space and fits much better into a classroom, ” Zlupko said. 

As a result of these new computers, broadcasting students expect to have a much easier time doing their day to day activities in the class in the months yet to come. 

“Overall, I think a faster and newer computer provides an easier and faster production of broadcasting content from all of the students involved, ” Zlupko said.